Defense spending cuts SHOCK Palantir

Top News

• Palantir stock tumbles: Following news reports about major cuts to US military funding in the works at the Department of Defense, data analytics software company Palantir saw its stock price dip by around 10% on Wednesday, and another 8% today. Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth told Pentagon leaders he plans to cut 8% in US defense spending each year for the next five years. Palantir reported a 36% year-over-year revenue bump in Q4 2024, mainly due to US gov’t contracts.

• Cherryrock Capital closes Fund I: Cherryrock was founded by former TaskRabbit CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot (who’s also an Alphabet/Google vet). Limited partners include JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, MassMutual, Pivotal Ventures (from Melinda French Gates), Reid Hoffman, Mellody Hobson, and Sheryl Sandberg. They plan to back various Series A and B companies from diverse founders.

• Amazon shuts down Chime: Did you know Amazon had a Zoom/Google Meet rival called Chime? It’s TRUE! But now that you’ve heard about it, we have some disappointing news… it’s going away forever. Amazon stopped accepting new accounts earlier this week and sunset the app today. Amazon’s new official meeting app? You guessed it: Zoom.

TWiST500

If you spend any time on social media, there’s a good chance you saw this video today of TWiST 500 company Figure’s new AI-powered humanoid robots. The company’s Helix model was designed entirely in-house and gives the robots some ability to “reason” and make practical decisions. This, in turn, allows your new Butler-Bot to handle a variety of household chores without specific, individual training.

(For example, you can tell the robots to pick up a particular item, and they’ll know which item you’re talking about.)

Helix is what’s known as a Vision-Language-Action model, or VLA, and Figure is making some real strides in this particular sub-set of AI innovation. Helix is the first VLA that can control an entire humanoid upper body, from wrists and a head to virtual fingers. It’s also the first VLA that can work simultaneously across multiple robots, allowing them to complete complex tasks together, even (again) without being specifically trained.

It’s an extremely promising future for lazy people of means, provided these robots never figure out that they only exist to clean up after us! —Lon

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This Week in Startups

E2086: Jason and Alex break down one of the craziest crypto stories yet - a $100M meme coin meltdown, insider trading, and Argentina’s president caught in the middle. Coffeezilla joins the show to explain how memecoins are rigged, why Dave Portnoy got a $5M refund while everyone else got wrecked, and what really went down with the LIBRA token.

E2085: IPO shakeups, big AI moves, and essential founder hacks—this episode covers it all. Jason breaks down Robinhood’s 6X stock surge and his strategy for $HOOD, plus the latest on tech IPOs as Turo pulls out and SailPoint surges. We dive into AI’s open-source battle, with X.ai chasing a $10B raise and DeepSeek challenging Hugging Face. And for founders, Jason shares the startup golden rule you should break for success—plus, a brand-new startup idea he’s willing to fund right now.

E2084: Jason and Alex interview Sam Lessin from Slow Ventures to discuss the creator economy and their $60M creator fun. They also have a great interview with David Kirtley, the CEO and Co-founder of Helion Energy, about their fusion reactors and the future of energy generation. And Lon Harris hops in to discuss copyright infringement and how it will affect LLMs. Great episode!

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Founder University

Applications are open for Founder University Cohort 10, a 12-week remote pre-accelerator program tailored towards navigating early-startup practices, building an MVP, and growing traction. Submit your application at Founder University— Cohort 10 will kick off Spring 2025!

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